Joining the literature club should be a pretty simple affair, or at least that’s what most of the five girls in that club thought… and then they realized that literature can sometimes contain some… rather sultry passages. To make matters worse, when talking about the rather simple subject of “what would you like to do before you die”, one girl quite frankly says “have sex”. Given that these are teenagers in puberty, with many of their peers bragging about or planning their conquests, the girls of the literature club now have sex on their minds way more often than they are comfortable with. Kazusa in particular is in a rough position, because the childhood friend she always saw as a younger brother has now become handsome and popular, with girls who are interested in him saying mean things about her. And just when she figured he probably wasn’t interested in sex, she catches him with his pants down and watching porn. Meanwhile, the other girls have their own concerns with this whole “sex” thing…
There’s an article about how Mari Okada, the scriptwriter for AnoHana, initially wrote that work to have “slapstick erotic elements” that ultimately ended up getting scrapped. Clearly, Okada hasn’t forgotten about that, and with O Maidens in Your Savage Season (Japanese title: Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo., or AraOto for short) her coming-of-age sex comedy is here with a vengeance; not only is Okada writing the script for the anime, but the manga it is adapting is one Okada herself provided the story for, so this one has her fingerprints all over it. Anyone familiar with Okada’s works knows what to expect: plenty of teenage angst and melodrama, complete with kids screaming their problems out to the world. That these problems this time around have to do with sex is just a minor detail, right? …In all seriousness, expect a lot of dirty talk in this one. If you’re uncomfortable with high schoolers talking candidly about sex, this one will make you squirm. That said, there’s no visual fanservice; this is a serious look at how these teenagers come to terms with their burgeoning sexuality. And rather than portraying these girls as horny or perverted, they are shown to be quite confused about this whole sex thing, including how it impacts the changing relationships around them. As such, this might actually be a good anime for Christian viewers, especially those trying to reach out to teenagers. It’s easy to tell them they should just save themselves for marriage, but such simple messages fail to address the turmoil they may be going through trying to understand sex amid the mixed messages they get about it around them. If you can handle the subject matter, this could be a very worthwhile watch to better empathize with teenagers.
O Maidens in Your Savage Season is streaming on HIDIVE.
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